Vladivostok’s criminal ex-mayor unsuccessfully appealed against the seizure of 700 of his properties and got his movie theater and yacht club seized from him.
Former Vladivostok mayor Vladimir Nikolaev and other defendants in the anti-corruption suit filed by the Prosecutor General’s Office to seize nearly 700 properties from the state have appealed against interim measures imposed by the court on their property.
“Private complaints against interim measures have been filed by all defendants,” Elena Oleneva, head of the joint press service of the Primorye judicial system, told Kommersant. According to the court materials, only 21 complaints have been filed, the last one was filed on June 24.
The value of the property, which the Prosecutor General’s Office demands to seize from former Vladivostok mayor Vladimir Nikolayev and his relatives, exceeds 6.5 billion rubles. Within the framework of the anti-corruption lawsuit, the supervision asks to turn 681 property objects illegally obtained by the mayor with the use of his official position into the state income. As an interim measure, the court seized the property of the defendants, as well as shares in various companies and bank accounts.
Kommersant has learned that the Leninsky District Court of Vladivostok, where the anti-corruption suit of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office against former mayor Vladimir Nikolaev is being considered, has filed additional claims against the defendant. According to Kommersant’s sources, they concern the seizure of the building of the Severny Mol Sportivnaya Harbor Yacht Club (3, Batareinaya St.), the Neptun movie theater (41, Russkaya St.) and the 0.7 hectare land plots they occupy, as well as a number of other highly liquid objects. At the same time, the prosecutor asks the court to recover from the defendants 590.2 million rubles in compensation for the cost of property sold to third parties.
According to the arguments of the supervisory agency, the need to clarify the claim is due to the facts revealed in the course of additional verification activities about the illegal seizure by Vladimir Nikolaev from the municipality of another 135 objects, including social facilities (cinema, pharmacies, architectural monuments). Their total value exceeds 1.1 billion rubles.
Mr. Nikolaev concealed his possession of them through firms controlled by him – Khas-Film LLC, PKF Pacific Ocean LLC, Time Garden Limited, an international commercial company registered in an offshore jurisdiction (British Virgin Islands), and others. With their help, he used part of the premises to run a hotel business, and part of them he sold for the purposes of personal unlawful enrichment.
The original claim was for the property complex of the Amursky Bay sanatorium and 681 items of real estate with a total value of 6.5 billion roubles to be returned to the Russian Federation.